


Textbook

by Toft



Category: MythBusters RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-21
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/pseuds/Toft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sort-of sequel, or accompaniment, to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/37469">Robots Need Love Too</a>. Kari and Grant try to do it by the book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Textbook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bitter_crimson (Krim)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krim/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Robots Need Love Too](https://archiveofourown.org/works/37469) by [Toft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/pseuds/Toft). 



> Bitter_crimson wanted something set in the universe of [Robots Need Love Too](http://archiveofourown.org/works/37469), my Yuletide story for T'wings in which Jamie and Adam are kids in elementary school in space. So this is set slightly after that story.

Even though it's past midnight shiptime, the rec room on B level is brightly lit, and there are several small study groups gathered around the tables, plus a couple of young guys in Navigation jumpsuits scribbling on datapads together and eating bowls of stew from the cafeteria. Kari grew up on a freighter commune small enough that everyone took their sleep shifts together and they powered down during shipnight, so she and Tory would have to use a flashlight to walk to the bathroom. Even though she's lived on the _Myth_ for nearly four years, and the perpetual day of the shipwide common areas is great when she's got an exam coming up, she still can't get used to the staggered sleep shifts. Kari rubs her eyes, tries to focus on her pad, and thinks longingly of coffee, but she left her credit chip in her other pants.

"Hey."

Kari looks up, and sees Psych Grant smiling down at her. Crap, and she has kid snot on her shirt, and her hair's a total mess, she is so not looking impressive right now.

"Oh hey Gra- uh, Psych Grant, look," Kari blurts out, "I know I was supposed to get back to you about that parent's meeting -"

"Oh my god, call me Grant," he says, and smiles. "And look, seriously, don't worry, there's no hurry."

He dawdles next to her table, holding his mealtray. She wonders if he's going to sit down, if she should ask him, but she isn't sure if this is a work conversation, or what.

"I wanted to thank you for being so flexible about Adam's dresscode," Grant says. "I wouldn't normally have gone over Francoise's head like that, but it was such a breakthrough for Jamie, and I'm not sure that I agree a hundred percent with her about the way she's handling Adam, but that's - well, anyway, I just hope it doesn't disrupt the class."

"Oh, no, no, it's totally fine," says Kari. "Oh my god, I cannot believe the change in Jamie, you're doing such a great job with him."

Grant shrugs. "I was getting nowhere, actually, I feel like I wasted a lot of time with him. It's Adam and you that opened him up. God, kids like Jamie, it makes me so mad. He should have been assessed so much earlier, you know? When they come into the system late like that, you're just playing catch-up all the way along."

"He told me you were his friend the other day," Kari says, trying to cheer him up. He brightens.

"He did?"

"He says you have a -" she imitates Jamie's funny, careful monotone with those moonbase vowels, "reciprocal relationship."

Grant laughs. "Yeah, that seems to have clicked with him. Did he tell you he's teaching me about hydraulic systems? I'm having to dig out my old textbooks to keep up with an eight-year-old, it's embarrassing."

Kari giggles, then Grant looks down at her textbook and suddenly backs up.

"But, uh, hey, you're working, I won't disturb you," he says. "I'll see you at the meeting!"

He's gone before Kari can think to ask him to stay. She feels kind of mad at herself and dumb all evening.

*

"Kari?"

"Uh? Oh, god."

Kari lifts her face up off her book and rubs her eyes. They're sticky, and she probably has lines on her face, and to make it worse, Grant slides a cup of coffee over to her. Oh god, why is he so nice.

"You looked like you could use it," he says, with a hesitant smile.

"Oh, wow, thank you," she says, the smell of the coffee going straight to her brain.

He puts his tray down next to her, then hesitates, suddenly looking stricken. "Do you - uh, do you mind if I sit here? I don't want to bother you - are you too busy?"

Kari pushes her datapad aside, and grabs the cup. "No, it's okay, I could use a break. Oh, coffee, god, thank you."

She gulps at it, and burns her tongue, but it's worth it.

"How's the studying going?" he asks sympathetically. " What is it?"

"Ethics of Visual Analysis."

Grant winces, and opens up his yoghurt.

"How close are you to being done?"

"Three more courses," Kari sighs. Another eighteen months at least, studying part time. It feels like forever. But at least that way there's a chance her portfolio will be anywhere near competitive with the rich kids who have can work on theirs full-time.

"What schools are you looking at?"

Kari hesitates, staring into her coffee.

"If you don't want to talk about it -" Grant says quickly. "I'm sure people ask you the same dumb questions all the time, you don't have to -"

"It's fine," Kari says, unable not to smile. "Earth schools, mostly. London. And, uh, New York. Sapporo."

Grant nods, like it's totally reasonable for a freighter-bait elementary school teacher to think she could get into Sapporo. He probably has no idea about art, but it still makes Kari feel a little less like a total disaster.

"Hey, I saw you're doing an exhibition up on three-deck," he says. "I was thinking I'd go check it out tomorrow."

"Oh, it's just a student thing," Kari says, embarrassed. "It's a group showing."

Grant shrugs, smiling. He looks like he's about to say something else, when Kari's tablet beeps. It's Tory. He's been out for a week on the drills, shit, she forgot he was back today.

"Oh, hey, I'm sorry, I have to take this, it's my brother," she says, and Grant's face falls a little. She bites her lip, and nearly asks him when he was thinking of going to the exhibition, but she's worried it'd sound pushy, he was probably only being polite anyway, and he's already getting up. "I'll - see you round? Thanks for the coffee, so much, you have no idea."

Grant smiles, waves over his shoulder and nearly trips over a chair. Kari's still giggling as she slides open her com.

*

The next night, while Kari's telling herself not to keep one eye on the door, Grant comes by a little earlier. This time, he slides a cookie over the table. Kari smiles tiredly and flaps a hand at him, almost managing to get up the energy to lift her head from her arm, but not quite.

"Hey, I was just passing by," he says turning his head to the side so he's the right way around for her to see. "Mind if I join you?" He waggles a giant textbook in her line of vision. It says, _Teaching Basic Electronics for Levels 2-3_. "Study party!"

Kari giggles, despite herself, and tugs herself upright. Maybe it's time for a soda.

"Hey, how are the kids dealing with the time shift?" Grant says.

They're docking at the MCS - Mars Central Station - in two weeks, and they're going through the time adjustment to synchronise their clocks to station time. It means they're all caught up for shore leave, but everyone's jetlagged by increments for a week. This time there's only a five-hour time difference, so they don't even get a day off to adjust.

"Oh you know," Kari grimaces, and rubs her eyes. She hates time shifts. "Cranky."

"Did Adam get in a fight again?"

"No, but he was in the corner for, like, the whole afternoon. And Jamie wouldn't stop doing math, I just had to leave him with his pad."

Grant laughs softly. His eyes crease up when he does, he has a really nice smile. "Any plans for shore leave?"

"Oh, you know, I thought I'd paint the town red."

Grant snorts into his coffee, then he chokes and his eyes start watering and he gets really embarrassed, and it's so adorable, Kari's still smiling the next day thinking about it.

*

Kari has three messages when she checks her datapad at recess the next day. Two are from Tory, but they're so loud she can hardly hear them, there's music and a lot of laughing in the background. She checks in the playroom, but it all looks quiet, Alisha is organizing some kind of running game that doesn't look like it's going to end in tears just yet, and Adam and Jamie are safely bent over something together in the corner. She checks the time, then calls him before she looks at the next message. It takes eleven buzzes for him to wake up, and she enjoys every one.

"Wha'?"

"I swear to god, Tor, if your friends don't stop drunk-dialling me -"

Tory groans. "Whattime is it?"

"Time for science!" Kari says, and Tory huffs a laugh.

"I can't believe you still say that."

"Believe it, buddy," she says. "Look, I swear I'm going to block your number if you can't stop Scottie from stealing your pad, okay?"

"She has a crush on you, who am I to stand in the way of true love?" Tory cooes, then grunts, obviously rolling over in bed.

"Oh, fuck off," Kari says, then claps her hand over her mouth and looks through the viewing window guiltily. It's mostly soundproof, but she sees Jamie looking at her pointedly. She smiles and waves at him. She never knows what that kid's thinking.

"Methinks she doth protest too much!" Tory crows. "Kari and Scott-ie, sitting in the tree -"

"Are you coming to the family dinner tonight?"

"Oh, shit, I forgot," Tory mumbles. "Yeah, I guess. But I'm not gonna meditate or wear the beads."

"Can you at least not regale dad and mom with near-death piloting stories again? I had to listen to them worry the whole time you were out this time round."

"Dangerous is the way that I _like_ it," Tory leers.

She hangs up on him.

The next message is a text, from Grant. _Really liked the art. Your piece was great, loved the sculpture, you'll have to explain it to me. Study party again tonight?_

She smiles, and texts back, _Deal. Coffee's on me!_

*

"Oh, no, no, I mean, I _love_ them, I love all of them," Kari's saying, as they walk back towards D-section. "They're such great kids, like, Jamie's so smart, and Adam's so _funny_, but it's just -" she rubs her face, and tries to work out what she's saying. Grant stifles a yawn against his hand, but he's still watching her and listening. "I guess they get assigned to my class because fucking Alistair thinks I'm more maternal, or something, but they're _hard_, and I don't - you know, I'm not that experienced, I don't have any advanced Edu training or anything, and I just want to do what's best for them, and I don't know if I get it right."

She's close to tears, suddenly - damn it, she's so fucking tired, she just wants this exam to be over and then she's going to sleep for a week - and it's worse when she looks at Grant, because he looks so understanding and sweet, and she desperately wants, for a second, to - to hug him, or ask him to come to bed with her, and back home it would have been so much easier, she just would have _asked_, but she feels like Grant was probably brought up more conservatively than she was, just like _everyone else in the solar system_, and she feels lost and foreign, useless, like she hasn't so often, lately.

"You're doing a really great job," he says, all sincere and soft. "Seriously, those kids are so lucky to have you, you have no idea how rare it is to have someone who actually listens to them and, and stays open to what they need and thinks creatively about it. You're amazing."

Kari bites her lip, trying not to cry or blush, and Grant looks away suddenly. He takes a quick breath, then shuts his mouth again. God, she could just ask him if he wants to have sex with her. She could. But what if -

Kari clears her throat. "It was really nice of you to take Adam and Jamie in the Robotics class. It's been really great for them."

"It's been great for me," Grant enthuses, picking up the conversation with obvious relief. "They ask all these _crazy_ questions, they're so great for the class, and they're really making me go back to basics with some of this stuff and relearn it all a totally different way."

"Do you have a degree in Robotics as well as Child Psych?" Kari asks.

"Oh god, no, it's mostly a hobby, really, I -" Grant says, then Kari notices they're at the door to her section. She considers, for a second, pretending they're not, but she'd feel really silly if Grant found out, and she is super tired. They talk for another fifteen minutes about robotics anyway. For a moment, when they say goodnight, she thinks he's going to kiss her, and her heart is still beating double-time when she gets back to her quarters and falls down on her bed, fully clothed.

*

On impulse, Kari switches her monthly shift in the ship's hothouse when she sees Grant's name on the roster for Wednesday. When she takes the set of gloves next to his, he jumps, and looks so happy to see her she wants to kiss him, right there. She's totally screwed, she realizes. She pots tomatoes next to him for an hour, sweating in the damp heat and enjoying the smell of oxygen, making him laugh with stories about all her parents' plant-breeding failures in the freighter, and trying not to look at the smear of dirt on his cheekbone that makes him look kind of hot. Finally, they pause to have some juice. He looks up at her, and she forgets what she was about to say.

"I -" he says, at the same time as Kari says, "Do you -"

They laugh.

"I was thinking I might go to see the Wo Jun exhibition at SMC," Grant says, looking at the floor. "Do - do you want to go with me? Your exam's on Monday, right? You'll be done?"

"Sure," Kari says. "Yeah, I'd really like that. You -" she takes a deep breath, "you mean like a date? I mean, it's fine if you don't -"

"You don't have to-" says Grant at the same time.

Kari groans, and puts her face in her hands. "Oh my god, I have no idea what the rules are, here."

"I don't either," he says earnestly. "I don't even - are there rules?"

"I guess," Kari says miserably. "I always seem to find out when I break 'em."

"I thought there was a rule that you were too awesome to date me," Grant says. "So, uh, if you wanted to break that one, I'd be fine with that."

Kari thinks, to hell with it. "Do you want to have sex with me?"

"Yes," Grant says immediately, and his eyes go kind of huge. "Yes, yes, I - but, um, maybe we could go out a few times first? I'm - I'm kind of shy."

"I think I can deal with that," Kari says.

Grant smiles, and she smiles back. As they walk back out to the tomato beds together, she slips her hand into his for a moment and squeezes, wet soil squishing between their fingers.

"Ew," Grant says, and Kari giggles helplessly, feeling happy and good, and not a disaster at all.  
End


End file.
